Organizers of the Wausau, Wisconsin Labor Day parade have “made it clear some Republican lawmakers aren’t invited. The reason: not supporting workers’ collective bargaining rights back in February.”

They’re mad because Wisconsin’s Republican legislature and governor curtailed government union bargaining rights. But they ignore the fact that legislation addressed only public employee unions, not those in private enterprise. So the “not supporting workers’ collective bargaining rights” is an overstatement.

(Aside: Why do spineless Republican prostiticians avoid addressing this baseless allegation head-on, thereby strengthening the myth? The main talking point should be: Why should working taxpayers be forced to pay taxes for public employees, who turn around and use our taxes to lobby for more taxes via collective bargaining? They’re using our money to empower themselves to be more effective in getting more of our money!)

Organizers also ignored the fact that many registered Republicans are workers, too. And if it’s true that most non-workers vote Democrat, the insult is even more egregious.

Wausau Mayor Jim Tipple stated that such behavior won’t be tolerated, because the city pays for the insurance and provides other services for the event. Tipple noted:

The banning of a political party from participation at any event co-sponsored by the City is against public policy and not in the best interest of all the citizens of the City of Wausau. And therefore, we encourage the event organizer to invite all interested parties, or reimburse the city for other costs.

There’s another reason for this, perhaps hinted at in the “not in the best interest” phrase: the First Amendment right of assembly. Since the city government is involved in the event, if they ban Republicans, it would be an interesting court case, to say the least.

Former civilian disarmament supporter and medical researcher Howard Nemerov investigates the civil liberty of self-defense and examines the issue of gun control, resulting in his book Four Hundred Years of Gun Control: Why Isn’t It Working? He appears frequently on NRA News as their “unofficial” analyst and was published in the Texas Review of Law and Politics with David Kopel and Carlisle Moody.

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1.
GDI

“Why should working taxpayers be forced to pay taxes for public employees, who turn around and use our taxes to lobby for more taxes via collective bargaining? They’re using our money to empower themselves to be more effective in getting more of our money!”

And, through union dues deductions and other mechanisms, the cities, counties and states are serving as enablers.

GDI, there are a number of wonderful things about the WI legislation now in effect, only one of which is that the state will no longer withhold union dues from paychecks and the union must collect it directly from all the members. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that a lot of the members are not paying now and the union’s cash flow is way down.

Contributing to their cash flow woes is that the school districts are no longer required to buy the highly overpriced union sponsored health insurance plan. In fact, most school districts are finding that despite the reduction in revenues from the state under the new budget, they’re coming out millions of dollars better off because they can shop around from private sector providers now. Imagine that, their own unions had been overcharging every school district millions of dollars every year for essentially the same plans. Yeah, those unions, always looking out for the little guy.

The only districts that are hurting are the ones that rushed through new union contracts because they’re stuck with the wildly overpriced union plans. They pushed those contract signings up while Judge Sumi’s stay order on the budget act was still in effect, before the WI Supreme Court could slap down Sumi in no uncertain terms for violating her authority under the WI constitution.

In addition, unions are no longer in control of work rules, so that many districts are discovering that they can get more productivity out of their existing work force by re-scheduling the work load.

Because of all of this, no teachers are being laid off. Now if there were just a way to streamline the process by which deadwood can be eliminated and only the best teachers retained.

And the cherry on the sundae is that public union workers must now actually contribute some of their own money to their health care and pension benefits, both of which were gold-plated. And those contributions are still far below what are required in the private sector for smaller benefits.

Unions are the single largest campaign contributors in every election, over $200 million each cycle. Despite a substantial minority of members being Republicans/conservatives, 97% of those contributions go to Democrats (I have to assume the other 3% goes to RINOs) who would then push for more Big Government.

Given the above distribution of contributions, the unions were in effect actually nothing more than a conduit to funnel taxpayer dollars to Democrats. Now that their automatic dues deductions are gone, along with their health insurance lucre, look for them to ramp up the pressure in every way possible to get them back, including violence.

If the WI miracle catches on with other states (and it already is), it’s literally the death knell for both the unions and the Democratic Party.

Summing it up, they’re close to $200M. But that’s for ALL unions: private and public.

If you want the really campaign big money, look at lawyers, representing just over 1M attorneys nationwide. They contributed over $243M in 2008, 3:1 in favor of Democrats. Historically, they’re the #1 industry in campaign contributions.

I did say that it was “unions” not “public sector unions” that contributed the $200 million. I had seen the $200 mil quoted elsewhere and knew it was for all unions, but didn’t know it was made up of all those types of contributions.

But that is a difference almost without a distinction. If the WI experiment is allowed to play out, and the members of the affected (not all are) public sector unions begin to see that the sky is not falling, and it gets out that both they and the hated “management” (mostly school districts here) are better off, there might be a sea change in the attitudes toward unions and how they are mucking up the economy after their time has long passed. Maybe some states might even flop to “right-to-work” if the Republicans can have another good election cycle next year.

Open Secrets doesn’t show in-kind contributions either, does it, like phone banks, get out the vote campaigns, and “independent expenditures” by ostensibly non-profits, naming no candidates, etc? Heck, if they had to, the media would probably vault to the top with a couple billion in free advertising for Democrats via puff pieces on them and favorable news manipulation, but I suppose that the left would argue that a push, since it’s offset by a couple billion in free advertising for the Republicans, in the form of hit pieces and gotcha interviews.

I think Obama should have had to declare his Senate salary as a campaign contribution, given he started running for POTUS the day before he was sworn in.

As for lawyers, Dave Barry had a great idea when he ran for president in 2000. In his position statement on foreign policy he said:

“I am sick and tired of watching the United States get pushed around by dirtbag nations such as Iraq. If I were president, and Saddam Hussein gave me any trouble, I would unleash the ultimate weapon on him. That’s right: I would have a bomber fly right over downtown Baghdad, open the bomb doors, and drop: lawyers. If that didn’t paralyze Iraq, I would drop more lawyers; and if THAT didn’t work, I would put parachutes on the lawyers.”

And lastly Howard, it would be very interesting if the information was available somewhere as to how many state public employee unions in the other states, covering how many employees, had similar agreements with their “management” units to use the union sponsored health insurance plans, non? It might help explain how they get a good chunk of that $200 million to begin with,.

I’m not certain how I would even go about it. Seems like you would have to do it individually for every school district at least in every non-right-to-work state (are there public unions in right-to-work states?). Then every other public union as well, like firefighters, cops, prison guards and the myriad of other public unions, which, for all I know are separate contracts for every county, city, state, etc. For instance, I heard that in WI alone, there are over 300 police and firefighter unions.

I’m pretty computer savvy, but not sure where to look. And I certainly don’t have the time or money to file FOIA requests on all of them.

Any ideas on who might have summary data like that (the unions, no doubt, but somehow I suspect they may not kindly to requests for info)? Maybe some think tank like Cato or Heritage?

You probably have access to my email addy. If you have any suggestions, please contact me directly.

Someone commented on Althouse’s post regarding this: “…Republican animosity toward the labor movement should absolutely get them banned from Labor Day celebrations. Of course, Democrats will have to stay locked away during Independence Day and Memorial Day.”

Democrats don’t want to attend 4th of July parades. Seems some professor from Harvard (where else? And probably with a stimulus grant) did a study and showed that if a Democrat takes his kids to even one such parade, it could turn them away from the Dark Side of the Force: